T: Florida is his ballgame … but if Clinton loses Florida, Ohio AND North Carolina, suddenly she is in some very deep waters. NC depends on turnout, if the African-American vote gets out on Election Day she should be OK there too… if they don’t it’s going to be dicey.

J: She needs one of the three to shut the door. Preferably Florida but I think any of the three would about do it.

T: Nevada looks good for Clinton. Florida – Clinton, 100 percent she wins. Florida – Trump, 50-50. So, Florida is about 75 percent chance the true swing state of the race. If Trump wins Florida, it’s not just the 29 electoral votes he gets.

J: Yep, it’s the key to the election. It’s the one state that Trump 100 percent has to have… Clinton can win without it but Trump can’t.

T: That would indicate that the Hispanic vote isn’t as pro-Clinton as expected, and that the minority vote hasn’t been as activated as expected (either lack of interest of ant-voting measures are working), or that the white male dipshit vote was especially activated, or that college educated whites did not switch parties as much as expected.

538 is unusually conservative about their expectations, and their trust in the polls

because so many of those factors I listed above can’t really be measured based on polls.

J: Turnout is everything

T: That’s good for Clinton in many ways — I’m optimistic — but there is still far too much gray area in there to be 100 percent confident.

J: Exit polling shows the Hispanic vote in Florida breaking to Clinton by 78-17… the other factors we probably won’t know about until Wednesday morning. I’m not 100 percent confident of Florida, maybe 75 percent, but there are other paths if she does happen to lose there.

T: I don’t think that number will prove to be accurate … think about it. Which Hispanics are going to say who they voted for? The Trumpites, or the Clintonites? I do expect Clinton to get 70 percent, though.. the question will be 70 percent of how many?

J: It also depends on the ethnicity… the Cuban-Americans are traditionally Republican, but the Puerto Ricans and Mexicans are almost unanimous for Clinton.

T: I thought NC was in the bag a couple of weeks ago, but the Repubs have really clamped down on the anti-get out the vote stuff. I bet it’s ugly on the ground in Charlotte and the surrounding areas.

J: They got shut down on that but how many voters didn’t get the message?

T: Oh, they got OFFICIALLY shut down. Have you been to the south? I honestly don’t know why anyone with dark skin would live in some of those areas. I think Clinton’s get out the vote apparatus is strong, though. Everyone says her machine is working well.

J: Yeah, the Dems outnumber the R’s 4,200 to 900 in paid staff, so their ground game is vastly superior.

T: All trends working in the right direction — betwetting gone, now only worried about a sudden burst of fecal outrage. Clinton has a 3.6 percent lead now.

J: I think even fecal outrage wouldn’t stop it. I thin k she has it in the bag. A colostomy bag, if you will.

T: Well, a large polling error would create it, a sudden burst of WTF, right out the back of my butt.

J: It would have to be a MASSIVE polling error. Silver is getting a lot of hate, he’s very much an outlier now… the other aggregators have Clinton 90%+.

T: I have heard some of the anti-Silver stuff … it’s not really fair. He’s not a predictor, he’s a forecaster. 70 percent is an accurate reflection of a race that’s been all over the dammed place. We both know that normal conditions make that more like 96 percent, but that assumes no lunatic polling interference, all the expected voters actually get out and vote, and the pollsters were all weighting their polls correctly.

J: I agree that there are a lot of wild cards but even so Silver seems to be overly conservative.

T: No, he’s accounting for things the others don’t account for. He’s not trying to make anyone happy, he’s trying to cover all bases. The 99 percenters will all fade into the woodwork if they are wrong, but they will crow like little bitches if they are right. Silver wants to still be here, either way. He had the race up around 90 percent in 2010 with what looked like a much closer race (49-48 Obama). Right now it’s 48.6-45.1. What’s different? Why is it 70, and not 90? It’s different because of several factors, two of them above the others: 6.3 percent undecided, and normal polling error.

T: Plus the wide swings in the polls, including in the last couple of weeks. We might think it’s 90 percent or 95 percent, or 99 percent, but we are just talking out our asses. Silver actually calculates the factors and runs them through 10,000 simulations every time a new polls comes out. If he says it’s 70 percent and some other asshole says he’s full of shit, ask yourself why the other guy is so quick to discount all the dammed volatility of this race? Silver has a long track record of accurate modeling. He’s accountable. The Huffington Post is a left-leaning paper. It’s a good paper, with professional reporters, but a thumb is a thumb. Silver tries mightily to keep his thumbs off the scale.

J: Basically the HuffPo’s argument is that Silver tweaks his data to create fat tails in the distribution which makes extremely implausible events look much more likely. Silver has a 3% chance of Clinton getting north of 400 EV, which even I think is fantasy.

T: They are wrong. The flat tails are specific to a single-result two-way race. For example, Larry bird is 99 percent to beat Wilt Chamberlin in a three point shooting contest, but he ain’t a 99 percent favorite if they are shooting just one each. Three percent sounds about right … that allows for the chance the polls are off three percent in the other direction. If trump, down 3.5, is 30 percent, then Clinton has at least a three percent chance of winning by 7-8 percent – and that could put her over 400 in the electoral college.

J: Silver also has a 7 percent chance of Clinton getting less than 200 EV which would mean she would lose every single swing state plus some others in the upper Midwest.

T: Sounds about right. You can’t assume the polls are 100 percent accurate. They can be off as much as 3-4 percent, and it would be considered a normal polling error. Seven percent is about halfway through the third standard deviation, I think.

J: Nothing about this election cycle has been normal.

T: Sixteen percent is the first standard deviation, then 8.5, so 7 is a bit more than two standard deviations down. The other prognosticators all assume the polls are accurate. Silver assumes the polls are as human as the people taking them, so he uses the sample error ratios from polling history back to 1972.

J: Well, we’ll find out tomorrow I guess. All the signs are pointing in the right direction but there’s still the turnout wild card.

T: Agreed, John. Will voter turnout will be consistent with the pollsters’ expectations? This might be the true 64 dollar question. I think the indicators favor Clinton, get out the vote favors her. Early voting favors her, the trends favor her – she is gaining in the polls.

J: Organization favors her.

T: Trump’s putrid approval rating favors her.

J: Trump being Trump favors her.

T: But trump’s sheer insanity, and the insanity of his followers, means we can’t assume they will either stay home or allow free access for minorities in the key states. They took his twitter away, did you see that? Any chance he tweets tonight? I bet he does — he can’t resist.

J: I saw that someone claimed it, the surrogates said no but evidence indicates that they did. I’d bet he does too, he just can’t help himself… some stupidity at 3 am.

T: Has he tweeted? Are they URGAY tweets coming from his android with lots of letters misspelled and the dates wrong?

J: Tomorrow night’s 3 am tweetstorm should be one for the ages.

T: Oh question! If – assuming the polls are accurate – Hillary gets called around 930-10 pacific, how long does it take for Trump to concede, does he call her, or does he tweet something? Does he dispute? I might almost say it would be best for the country if he NEVER concedes … if just keeps saying it’s rigged until even his biggest fans think he should give it up.

J: I don’t think he’ll concede… he’ll dispute every state that’s remotely close, I think he’s already lawyering up for that. It’s essential to his internal narrative that he doesn’t acknowledge that he lost… someone has to be blamed and it can’t be him.

T: If he just shits all over the process, eventually his people will realize he’s just a windbag and his hold over them will evaporate like the profits from every casino he ever bought.

J: Whether it’s the GOP rank and file for not supporting him, the FBI, rigged polls, whatever… he just mentally can’t admit that he’s a loser.

T: Automatic recounts for 0.5 percent, but over that he’s gonna be wasting his time. Once he’s lost – and his main bloc realizes that he’s lost …

J: And his alt-right minders will be encouraging him all the way.

T: He will have to return to the bottom of the fridge with the rest of the roaches.

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Another aimless, pointless roundtable discussion, from deep in the bowels of the Bajolers archives

Rushmore Revisited: Rock-n-Roll’s Mighty Mountain of Momentous Mayhem

T: Hey, guys, what are the four songs on your Mt. Rushmore of the rock-n-roll era? I don’t mean just rock songs, but the songs of the 1955-2018 era. We are old, so I assume most of them will be old, but that’s up to you. Here are the criteria we came up with yesterday, plus Gary is a criteria fiend, so I’m sure he’ll find more.

Yapping Dogs

Headline after headline this morning, from every direction, says something to the effect of “What happened to the Celtics?” or “Why do the Celtics suck now, when the Cavs sucked last week?” or “The Cavs are now the greatest team in the HISTORY of the – ”

Stop it. Just stop it.

NBA fans are great, but NBA writers are a bunch of reactionary yapping dogs, with the memory of an Alzheimer’s patient in a lethe field. Every year we go through this.

Once again, and PAY ATTENTION, all you journalistic Chicken LIttles who think the sky is falling every time it rains:

– In the NBA playoffs, the series don’t start until the home team loses. Now say that about 15 times, to lock it in.

– Seriously, 15 times. In the NBA, the series don’t start until the home team loses. SAY it.

The Cavs/Celtics series wasn’t over after the Celts won big in game one. It wasn’t over when the Cavs inexplicably stopping trying in the third quarter of game two, electing to huck up brick after brick instead of running their halfcourt offense.

Road teams occasionally steal game one, or catch a team on a bad day and

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About Barstool Politickin’

This slack chat website is the brainchild of notorious subversives (and notorious slackers) Johnny “Cake” Hunter and Terry “Chatterin’ Teeth” Vent. You can probably guess who got first pick of nicknames.

These guys have been off the grid for decades. We thought they were traveling the Pacific Rim, trading inflatable Harold Stassen dolls to the natives for Polynesian weed, but we found them hiding in the witness protection program. They entered the program in 1983, after they testified in the infamous “we can’t believe it’s not butter” truth in advertising scandal that took down Orville Redenbacher.

One of them joined a cult and the other one went into the insurance business; I can never keep straight which one sold his soul to an evil demagogue, and which one sells flowers at the airport. Both of them are addicted to Hawaiian pizza, so try not to get roped into a lunch date.

Ideologically, they pretty much hate everybody. Both have cast ballots for chronic losers from the major parties, the occasional third party, and once (I think) for a mollusk. Neither one of them voted for Donald Trump, but they think Ivanka is super hot.

Enjoy the madness.

We have no idea who this is

regards,

D.B. Cooper (shh.)

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GARY FLETCHER

I’ve noticed in the last couple of years that while writing I tend to skip over little words like ‘the’ and ‘and’ and the like. I also sometimes skip over letters. For example, the word ‘look’ turns into ‘lok.’

It gets worse. Now I’m occasionally missing entire words, a real problem for reading comprehension, as you can imagine.

What’s next? Perhaps I’ll write one opening sentence, then the final sentence and completely omit everything between the two. To wit, the following article:

First sentence: “We’re always walking by this spooky old house,” my wife said.

Last sentence: Just understand that you are competing with ghosts for my attention.

The thought amuses me. It’s like one of those ‘choose your own adventure’ books. Anyway, here’s the adventure I chose.

Train of Thought

“We’re always walking by this spooky old house,” my wife said.

We sure are. The two of us go for a constitutional that takes us through the same neighborhoods with routes only slightly different from day to day. Sometimes that means travelling north along Dartford Street to the intersection of Lorne Avenue. The house is one of those old three story jobs with a full basement. It has those narrow, rectangular windows at ground level that let light into the basement and, if you are in the basement, allow you to

Terry’s Latest Rant: Picking my Ideological Poison

I’m not liberal, conservative, a Trump lover or a Trump hater, but I have been accused of being all four. To be clear, my axis goes something like this.

(1) Total, relentless equality is both stupid and against human nature. So stop it with the PC Nazi garbage, use the bathroom that matches your plumbing (not your sexual preferences) and grow up.
(2) Cooperation is a virtue, but so is competition. The key is to balance them out. Don’t outlaw profit, but maybe outlaw franchising, so someone else can make a dammed profit.
(3) we can’t have an incompetent president with the power to blow things up. HIs views on race make him an asshole, but his views on reading and learning are what make him a danger to the nation.
(4) we can’t substitute rights for responsibilities. If you are proud of your vote, you dammed well better have taken some time to know what you were voting for. Or you are nothing more than a faceless lamb, proud of your missing wool as you march to slaughter with your nose in the air.

Most important, know where you are getting your information. Don’t let yourself be sold your news. Read newspapers – plural, don’t just let one guy be your source – and turn off those cable news filler shows. Don’t get your news from Facebook or Twitter or those other so-called media sites (like MSN) that treat gossip like news. It’ll just confuse you.

Contact Us

Email Terry: ventboys@outlook.com

Email Gary: garyafletcher@shaw.ca

Email John:

Or leave a comment under any of the articles.

We aren’t looking for help generating traffic, so don’t waste your time on that, but we’d love to hear from anyone interested in civil discussion, or who has a good knock knock joke, horse racing tip or dirty limerick.

Strangeland

When I read Kathy Gannon’s series about women in Pakistan, I accidentally began at the finish and worked my way back to the start. The backwards view gave me a strange perspective on the culture I was reading about. Rather than reaching the end with hope, understanding that the wheel of change grinds slowly and […]

Sep. 21, 2015 I like Bernie Sanders. Bread and circuses candidates are always popular; I mean, who doesn’t like free bread and circuses? Sep. 28 The latest wisdom … Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz will face off in the end or – if a two-man race doesn’t happen – there will be a brokered convention. […]

based on footage from Vintage Baseball’s YouTube page June 13, 2016 Dizzy Dean leaned forward to take the sign, his hands jostling for position in the crude, tiny leather mitt on his left hand while his elbows performed a lazy, distracted chicken dance in the folds of his wool jersey shirt. Once the catcher gave […]

December 4, 2016 (excerped from a previous article) Do we visualize Willie, Mickey and the Duke, Joe DiMaggio and Ken Griffey Jr. when we think about centerfielders? I do, and it muddies my judgment. I wind up comparing every new centerfielder to the very best who ever played, and I lose perspective. I forget what […]

The Little Red Haired Girl May 11, 2016 During American Idol’s season nine audition rounds, judge Kara Dioguardi gave a serious, meaningful look to a skinny, freckled, ginger-haired hippy girl and said, “You’re great!” with such emphasis that I figured the little hipster in the granny glasses was going to be one of the stars […]

Who cried wolf? There has never been an easier question to answer. Who cried wolf? Well, who has done 98 percent of the crying since last summer? Blame the media if you prefer, but the media is just us, telling each other what’s going on. In the Twitter/Instagram/Facebook world, we are literally the media. Even […]

Her name was fake, but the ink-stained wretch in the monogrammed bloomers was real. Let’s face it; she had to be. Her tale fails miserably as a work of fiction. It’s too pat, too perfect. No self-respecting publisher would buy it. Nellie Bly was thrust into poverty at an early age, during a period in […]

Fletch, the last thing I want to do is impugn the reputation of scrupulous salesmen. There needs to be a different term, I guess. Salesman is taken by the Trump types, though – and they ain’t the types to give anything up, so they ain’t leavin’ – so I suppose it’s gonna have to be […]

For judgment, perspective is everything. I wrote this on April 21, 2016 in response to a poster on BJOL whose perspective is, to put it mildly, a bit demanding. It’s impossible to generate perfect results from imperfect data – and imperfect life forms. I think of it as the 1-10-30 rule, but there are more […]

Like the rest of America, I have been trying to figure out why Donald Trump, a political laughingstock for decades, is suddenly a serious presidential candidate. Why are so many Americans backing Trump, a man with no political skills or experience, for the nation’s top job? To understand the Trump phenomenon, It helps to to […]

Healthcare in English

Burning barn insurance: When your barn catches fire, you immediately call the Allstate office upwind for a quote. In our context, this is the tendency for people to only buy insurance when they anticipate that there will be a need for it (also known as adverse selection).

CAT scan: Computerized axial tomography, used to look inside your body and see just where the cheeseburgers are blocking your arteries.

Co-insurance: The percentage of medical expenses not covered by your insurance; in an 80/20 plan such as Medicare, for example, the 20% is your coinsurance.

Co-payment: A payment charged to you when you see a doctor. Differs from co-insurance in that it is fixed; you will pay the same co-payment at every doctor’s visit regardless of the services you receive.

Contractual adjustment: A discount that is applied to the doctor’s fee by the insurance carrier in order for the doctor to participate in the insurance carrier’s network. Typically around 40% of the doctor’s gross bill.

Deductible: An amount charged to you before your insurance will begin to pay.

Flexible spending account (FSA): A plan which allows employees to put money into an account pre-tax to be used for medical expenses. This money must be spent in the tax year in which it is deducted.

Health Savings Account (HSA): A plan which allows employees to put money into an account pre-tax to be used for medical expenses. Differs from an FSA in that the money in the account can be carried over from year to year.

In-network: A physician who participates with a particular insurance carrier.

Medicaid: Government insurance plan for low-income people.

Medicare: Government insurance plan for senior citizens and the disabled.

Out-of-network: A physician who does not participate with a particular insurance carrier.

Palliative care: Care that is intended to relieve pain only; not curative or therapeutic treatment.

Participation: When a doctor agrees to accept an insurance carrier’s discounted rate (plus co-payments and co-insurance, if any) as payment in full for services rendered.